Since there seems to be a real lack of reviews for this model on the net, I wanted to share my thoughts, likes and dislikes on the Acer Aspire 1681 Laptop.

My friend and I both purchased this lappy from Newegg about a week ago for $1,365. Perhaps he will share with you what he thinks at a later time.

First off, I will point out the things I am not too happy with. These are small and of course have not made me want to return the unit.

*Battery life is very short. Hour, to an hour and 20 - 30 mins max on full charge. I read somewhere that this model ships with a 4 Cell battery? Anyone out there know where I can purchase an 8 Cell battery for this Acer Aspire 1681? Thanks in advance.

*2nd, my quotes key does not work the first time, but spits out 2 quote characters the 2nd time the key is pressed. Very odd. I just hit del, and I have my quoates. Doubt it is hardware related. Anyone out there have a fix for this?

*The heat on this thing is "blazing hot" on the underside right of center. Perhaps where the CPU resides. Hottest I have ever felt a lappy. The be fair, this is my first real laptop that I've used. I have had many others, but always got them in trades or on the cheap. Which, I turned around and sold. To fix the heat problem, I purchased the Cooler Master Coolpad. This is a heavy duty, dual fan, usb powered cooling pad. It rests under the lappy and the fans draw heat away from the lappy. A very cool $30 dollar or so investment.

*As some have mentioned before with this laptop I think or perhaps the maker of the LCD panel this unit uses, the 15.4" Wide Screen ( 1280 x 800,) you do have to find the "Sweet Spot" on it. This is not that much of a problem as the panel can be adjusted. I expected it to have great angle response which it doesn't. However, with that said, it's very easy to get it adjusted. Once adjusted, the picture is amazingly clear and sharp. My unit had no dead or stuck pixels.

*USB port placement. The lappy has 3. 2 on the side, 1 up front. It would have been nice to have one in the back. Very minor issue.

*Lappy does not appear to have Bluetooth installed. Would have been nice but not a big factor to me at this point. Can this be installed by the owner at some other point? Unit does have the button for it in front of laptop.

*Speakers are just .... weak. They also distort at highest sound setting. Some games, apps come in fine while others can barely be heard. This is nearly a deal breaker for me but when it is all said and done, I cannot return the lappy for this reason alone. I did however think about it. I wish the speakers would have been made slightly larger and placed at the top rear of the unit. I have a small travel sized DVD player with 7" LCD and the speakers are small yet amazing on that thing. Acer, take note.

Now, on to the things I like about the Acer Aspire 1681.

*Build quality, design and finish are very pleasing to the eye. Doesn't appear to be cheaply made. Seams are perfect. No plastic flashing. Screws are not marked up and apprear to be perfect and of high quality. Layout, keyboard response and button placement have not raised any red flags with me. So far, perfect. There are hot keys next to the power button for WWW, Email, etc. Nice touch. The stickers are even perfect on top and bottom. Nothing suspect or lazy looking. Perhaps machine placed. Overall, very high marks.

*CPU Power and memory seem very powerful, responsive. Unit came with 512 megs of pc2700( 2 x 256 Nanya ) 333MHz bus memory. I replaced that with 1 gig Geil pc3200 ( 2 x 512 Giel ) 400MHz bus memory. Before the memory switch, lappy was very responsive with the 512 megs. Plenty of power. Does seem very much like a Desk Top computer. I could not gauge as to what its Desk Top counterpart might be but I would say 2.4 - 2.8GHz Intel. Maybe faster. Anyone out there know for sure? Very curious.

*The ATI 9700 Mobility, tho only 64 megs does make the big difference to me. 128 megs would have been nice but 64 seems more than okay for now. I've played many current pc games, as well as demos for upcomming games. All played very smooth. Some needed adjusted to handle the 64 megs. Also, I noticed that this unit does not have true AGP. It has a PCI to AGP bridge. Perhaps this hurts video peformances somewhat. I am curious if most other lappys have the PCI to APG bridge as well. Maybe just the way the Intel chipset is designed for lappys. I am not at all educated in this area. Or more of a motherboard design issue?

All in all, this purchase has been a very good one for me. Not at all displeased and never a second guess.

I will try to answer any questions out there people might have.

Ralph

I read somewhere that that was abois fix for the ii key problem. May want to call ACER about that. The speeakers and audio - from the specs for the 1681wmli it has mono speakers including for line in/out and microphone in/out. Seems odd they would not be stereo. In any case I don't know if the mono vs stereo results in the audio experience you described. The folio design from what I've seen pictures of does seem attractive.

I'm also eyeballing the 1681, thanks for the review! I'm not turned off by the screen issue, it's all I've really been used to with laptops. But I am turned off by the heat issue. It's the thing I hate most about my old PIII notebook and want to do away with for any future purchases. From what I've seen the 1681 is pretty damn similar to the 4500, sans the curved keyboard and longer battery life. Maybe that's why they gave the 1681 the small one?

If you play UT2k4 or Doom3 could you post some framerates?

Having an uber gamer laptop is not a huge priority for me as I'm waiting to make a big investment when PCI Express is standard in notebooks along with the opportunity for video upgrades! Currently I don't want to spend much more than $1300.

About the battery thing. Per my research, the batteries do exist, but they're not available in the states yet. If you check the Acer accessories here:
http://www.acer.com/app/akc/internet/rwpgslib.nsf/graphic+files/nb_accessories/$FILE/notebook-accessories.pdf

you'll notice that the replacement battery is the same as the one for the 4000 and 4500 models. The issue being that the 1681's page cites the battery power accurately in accordance with your experience. The 4000 and 4500 are cited as having up to 5 hours of battery life. So I'm assuming that when those batteries become available you'll have 4+ hours of life your your lappy. Hope this helps!

Lastly, do tell about your friend's experience with the laptop. =)

SixFootDuo
<<...I replaced that with 1 gig Geil pc3200 ( 2 x 512 Giel ) 400MHz bus memory...>>

1681 only supports ddr333 2700!! or at least, that's what acer listed for memory support.

I think this is contributing significantly to your heat issues...i have read almost every review over the net related to this notebook and none had any heating issues to report!!! It's a dothan in a light and redesigned (post 2012/20 series) chasis, not a P4 or Amd64 waiting to fry any surface--it should stay plenty cool. Along with your quotes keys acting up, I think your case may be user specific, contact acer tech support if these issues persist.

For more info, visit acers global website to read up on the history, making and the amounts of rigorous testing that went into the new folio build. Yes, it's not just looks alone...ie: Temperature and humidity, acoustics, electrostatic discharge immunity, hinge life, keyboard switch life, free drop, weight and pressure, shock and vibration, etc...the list goes on! You shouldn't be having the issues you're experiencing above, but then, I don't think they're that big of a deal!

Nonetheless, glad to hear you liked your overall experience & impressions, that's the most important thing. I read somewhere on the web that 8-cells should be availiable w/in the next two months--by thankgiving latest. I will be ordering this notebook this week.

Word...

i am also planning to buy this notebook but can you explain the heat issue? is it still hot when you're only listening to mp3's and surfing web? this shouldn't be the case with dothans as odetola said

and thanks for the review i haven't seen many reviews related to this new model

odetalo can you give me some review links?
thanks..

and another question; does it make a fan noise?
this is really important

No, several apps report the mainboard as supporting a 400MHz bus. Thus, you can use 3200pc memory.

The laptop was as hot with the 333MHz bus mem as it is with the 400MHz.

I hear zero fan noise.

odetola can you also please write your likes and dislikes about this notebook when you get yours?
because i have to make a special order to get this notebook and im not sure if they will accept a refund

and you got any pics of the lappy?

Your review is really good !

I'm going to buy one but I'm worrying about the heat and especially the battery life - it's too short ! Furthermore, it's kinda helpful if you could post some 3dmark !

Thank you very much !

green: I will not recieve it until the end of this week--friday, or early nextweek, tuesday, (b/c of no labor day delivery).

I will post a comprehensive review, after i have received it and have tested it for it's basic feel. I don't care much for batt. life so i don't expect anything spectacular...i will get the 8-cell once it's avalible by its end of september release date.

There are some short excerpts/reviews online (including this forum & other than this thread) from owners of this notebook already. I forgot to bookmark their sites but you can always check it out by googling it or searching other popular notebook forums.

Hey there, did you recieve the laptop yet? i am also considering it as well, did you post the review anywhere?

I got mine on Monday from Newegg and will agree with the short battery life, and I did have the key problem as mentioned above but it is gone now. I was looking at the FN+F1 help file and I thought I did something to get it working properly again although it may have just started working on its own. Anyway, the heat is not that big a deal at all IMO, but he is right that the right hand palm rest does get a bit warm although no fan noise with it on fulltime.

But really hot? No way, my mother has a Dell Inspirion and that @#$% will cook your palms and your legs big-time (but it is VERY nice). The screen rocks and yes doesn’t have that great of a viewing angle but who cares...you can’t see it all that well to shut it down while standing up? It does play UT2K3 and 4 at good frame rates with 8x6 rez and I have not loaded D3 up to it yet (no time). I will say this folks..if your looking to do quasi-serious gaming on it; look elsewhere. But, if you need a laptop anyway and the gamming is a bonus this may be for you. I consider myself a hardcore gamer with a P4 HT clocked to 3.8GHz, 6800GT@Ultra, 2xWD Raptors...PS2, Xbox, Atari, blah blah blah.

BTW..the antenea in this thing IS MIND BLOWING . I fired it up and saw my SSID and 2 others, lol..linksys and netgear from inside my apartment that basically gets ZERO cell phone reception unless you sit in this one spot and don’t move around at all, and I am on my 4th or 5th cell phone since living here and know it’s the all the concrete block in this place. I know GSM/AMPS/CDMA is different but just to give you an idea Oh, thanks for whoever posted about a battery becoming available in the next few months…do you have links to that info? I wonder if Acer will ever answer my email.

3DMark01:

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=8122449

3Dmark03 was 2762 but for some reason they would not let me publish the results...DX9 titles take some real 3D powa anyway...

Oh, and although I might be doing the backstroke a bit, when running 3Dmark it did get pretty hot, although I played UT2K4 on it last night and it wasnt bothering me. Probably because I was using a mouse, and the left hand side of the machine stays very cool.